running in circles

Richard texted to suggest a run last Tuesday evening. He has had a funny numb calf and so been laying off training, and stupidly I thought, what with the pleasant warm weather, this might be an easy-ish jog round the Seat. Huh! He has been doing fewer road miles (due to calf) and so exhaustively researching different lines in Holyrood. There is an almost unlimited amount. He had formed a plan to do a spiral, culminating in the summit. Readers will recall I had a similar plan a while back but it was fairly unrefined and messy. Rich didn't say whether he had been looking at a map or whether he just played it by ear. 

We started off doing the "boundary" run, same as I did last time but without the graphic distraction of the Innocent Railway, which made for a cleaner outside circle. We then did a road loop round the Queen's Drive (what ALL the way? I complained realising I wasn't going to be home in time for dinner.)

boundary run round perimeter

far too fast down here

onto road: far too fast up here

saw Matt coming opposite direction

got him involved

"that's another runner's evening you've ruined"

Matt had the good sense to bail out

 before we did the Rad Road back down to the Palace

This was one of the few photos I stopped to take,
the rest were on the hoof

up the Dry Dam

to the shoulder between Crow Hill and the summit

Now at this point we had a moment to catch our breath. I assumed we would be going to the summit but Rich then proposed we descend by the awful Gutted H steps and re-ascend by the "middle way" as Mary calls it. I nearly threw in the towel at this point as I was knackered and it was only Tuesday. "My dinner will be getting cold."
"You've got a microwave?"
"Not telling."

unpleasantness

now back up, up, up!

It was a joy to be finished and Richard was pleased with just how spirally his read-out on his phone was. I couldn't really see it through the tears sweat in my eyes. Nice evening though and there were loads of folk on the hill.

We took a 7 Hills type descent off the summit. As you can see I romped ahead. (Might have been Rich was tying his lace.)

11+ miles and over 2,000ft of climb. On a Tuesday evening! It may be some time before I go on a similar easy-ish jog with Rich although, like so many of these things, (Type 2 fun) nice to have completed, not nice to do.

spiral!
I removed the line of descent from the summit because it spoiled the spiral effect.